November 12, 2023
Matthew 9:18–33

Title: The New Wine

Outline:

1. The New Wine
2. More Miracles
3. The Terrible Charge

Matthew continues to explain his account of the gospel by narrating on how the tension continued to simmer and ultimately boil over between Jesus and His opposition. We have seen charges by the religious leaders who –at the least– didn’t understand who Jesus was and at worst had made up there mind to stand in direct opposition against Him. This week, part of the simmering surprisingly comes from John’s disciples as they not only step up and question Jesus religious practices, but we will see Jesus enemies come to the lowest of lows as they blaspheme The Holy Spirit by way of Jesus’ healing ministry. But through it all Jesus stays focused on His mission: that of testifying on who He is and ultimately providing Himself as the perfect Lamb of God, the Savior for of the sins of the world.

The New Wine: READ 9:14-17

14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

• We have seen the Scribes and Pharisees oppose Jesus with criticisms already, now a third group start to question Jesus’ religious ways: the disciples of John the Baptist. (Cf. France, The Gospel According …, 161)
  • This question regarding fasting may have been an honest ask. They may have been wanting to understand the theology behind the dismissal of fasting from Jesus’ religious observance.
  • But this is not clear since we know of John’s undoubted pre-understanding of who Jesus was and his response to Jesus at His baptism. COMMENT
• When one considers the later questioning of Jesus being Messiah by the Baptist, it is hard to not think anything other than Jesus had this group scratching their heads also.
  • It seems that this group too expected something different from Messiah that what they got.
  • Perhaps, John’s being in prison may have had much to do with the questions that are now coming.
  • Barclay said, “[Jesus] was not going through the orthodox motions of religion, and therefore the orthodox were suspicious of him. Any man who breaks the conventions will suffer for it; and any man who breaks the religious conventions will suffer especially”, even among friends.
• The Pharisees prescribed fasting twice a week. John the Baptist’s disciples may have been even more committed to fasting than the Pharisees were given the Baptist’s lifestyle choices of self denial in the desert east of Israel.
  • If not, then they would have held to what the Pharisees taught, that the nation should fast twice a week regularly and at the times prescribed in the Law.

But here, we see Jesus specifically explain Himself. Jesus gives two reasons through three illustrations as to why for His disciples were not fasting.

1. Reason #1, Jesus is the Bridegroom.
   • Verse 15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
   • This idea was not straight from Jesus … Turn to John 3:25-30
   • Jesus is reminding John the Baptist’s disciples of the illustration that John used of Jesus when they complained about others going over to Jesus’ school of discipleship:
   • Jesus is the Bridegroom, John the Baptist is what we would call “the Best Man” and their disciples the wedding guests. (Carson, “Matthew”, 226 f)
   • So Jesus used John’s own illustration to sharpen the mishandling of the connection between theology and the application of it.

APPLICATION

• The American Church too can struggle with seeing the spiritual applications and happenings around us. >>
• We too can focus on religious practice instead of what is more important spiritually.
• Often times our own theology is contradictory to the Word of God.

2. Reason #2, verse 16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made.
   • Jesus used a second illustration, new cloth is not be used in an old garment.
   • There used to be such a thing as repairing clothes… hardly today…
   • A new, natural cloth patch would shrink and add more damage to a garment after the attempted repair was done.

• Jesus hammers His point home with a third illustration.
  • 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
  • New wine had to be put into new wineskins; old wineskins would burst if new wine was introduced. >>
  • “Old wine containers made out of animal skins eventually became hard and brittle. New wine, that continued to expand as it fermented, would burst the inflexible old wineskins. New (fresh) wineskins were still elastic enough to stretch with the expanding new wine.” (Constable)
  • New wine into new wineskins. “New” was chosen by the ESV translators for two different words. >>
  • But “Jesus used two different Aramaic words for new in verse 17. Neos means recent in time [#1 def.: recently born, young, youthful (Thayer)], and kainos means a new kind.” Constable said it well: “The messianic kingdom would be new both in time and in kind.” (Constable)

SO THIS WAS WEIGHTY STUFF HAPPENING BEFORE THEIR EYES.

• Most of the religious practices of the Jews had been in place for over 1400 years are now being changed because Jesus was here physically on the earth. But the time for a new contract has come.
• This was foretold in Jeremiah 31:31-32, “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
  • APPLICATION: We see the weightiness of one verse again. If God said it once it is enough.
• Here we see again, the New Contract being put in place and people of faith were missing the biggest shift in their nation’s history. Indeed in the world.
• Jesus is chipping away with ceremony and leaving the Law of Love in tack. For God is Love.
• Jesus did not fit into the religious box the people expected.
  • Jesus was a surprise to everyone.

OUR APPLICATION:

• Is fasting done away with entirely?
  • Jesus said the disciples would fast again and they did.
  • We only see two instances of it in the Church –post Jesus’ ascension: before choosing what we would call “missionaries” and before choosing elders in the Church (Acts 13:2-3 & Acts 14:23, respectively)
• We need the Spirit to teach us.
  • Would we have made the connections? “Jesus is the bridegroom, of course His disciples could … not … fast.”
• Most of the big things God is going to do are found in the Bible. But often, through a lack of familiarity, we do not know what God is doing in the world and in our lives.
• Jesus does not fit into man’s religious boxes.
  • Our job is to think like Him through the Spirit’s work.

TRANSITION: The New Wine >> More miracles >> Terrible Charge

More Miracles (9:18-31) ^{1 2}

TRANSITION: Three more miracles >> The terrible charge

The Terrible Charge: Read 9:32-34

9:32 As they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. 33 And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke. And the crowds marveled, saying, “Never was anything like this seen in Israel.”

• This is the climax of this section of Scripture:
  • Matthew has put forth that Jesus’ preaching was second to non.
  • Matthew now records that the people knew that Jesus’ works were second to non.
  • In the proceeding chapters we will see that Jesus’ ministry was second to non.
  • Ultimately we will see His death is second to non.
  • This is one of the driving, implied themes of Matthew: There was never a person like Jesus in the world. He is the unique One of God.
• It’s in this vein that Matthew brings the saddest contrast:
  • Verse 34 But the Pharisees said, “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.”
  • We know from the other writers’ accounts of the gospel that, the religious leaders were not able to deny Jesus’ obvious power, so they ended up blasphemed the Holy Spirit by saying Jesus power was from the prince of demons.
  • “The reaction of the Pharisees contrasts with that of the crowd in the sharpest possible terms.” (Constable)
  • Jesus rebuked this particular sin as uniquely unforgivable.
  • This sin is what we refer to as the unpardonable sin.
  • With this terrible charge, we see the “campaign” against Jesus flexing. The slanderers are now working in open opposition against the Son of God. As Barclay said, “The drive to eliminate this disturbing Jesus has begun.”

Notes

^{Notes from above may not be in numerical order.}

¹ As Jesus was going to raise the dead, a woman with a bleeding issue was healed. This issue would have made her unclean to ever be around, as those around her would have been ceremonially unclean. (See Leviticus 15:25-27.) Jesus’ exercise of healing people “is closely parallel to the ‘faith’ depicted” (France, The Gospel According …, 170) Look at v 22 again, "your faith has made you well” seem to be a what France called the “favourite pronouncement” as people were healed. (France, The Gospel According …, 171; English spelling retained.) Jairus’ daughter had died. We know this who he was from Mark 5:25. “According to Matthew, he announced that his daughter had just died. Mark and Luke have him saying that she was near death. Since she died before Jesus reached her, Matthew evidently condensed the story to present at the outset what was true before Jesus reached Jairus’ house.[856; [Carson, “Matthew,” p. 230]]” (Constable) Regarding these mourners in the text, Barclay described the scene well: “The garments would be being rent; the wailing women would be uttering their shrieks in an abandonment of synthetic grief; the flutes would be shrilling their eerie sound. In that house there would be all the pandemonium of eastern grief.”[861, Barclay, 1:353] (Constable) According to the Judaisms religious commentary of the day, “Even the poorest man of the Jewish people may not provide fewer than two flutes and a lamenting woman, which it was customary to hire for a funeral, as these too are included in the duties of burial.” (Mishnah, Ketuboth 4:4) People died in homes in the first century. The mourners laughed, for they knew what dead people looked like. “Jesus touched another unclean person, this time a dead one. His touch, rather than defiling Him, restored life to the girl. Other prophets and apostles also raised the dead (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:17-37; Acts 9:36-42). However, Jesus claimed to be more than a prophet. This miracle showed that He had supernatural power over man’s last enemy: Death. The Old Testament prophets predicted that Messiah would restore life (Isa. 65:17-20; Dan. 12:2).” (Constable)

² “The Gospel writers recorded that Jesus healed at least six blind men, and each case was different … Blindness was a common ailment in Jesus’ day, but the Gospel evangelists also used blindness to illustrate lack of spiritual perception.” (Constable) “Ironically, these two physically blind men saw who Jesus was more clearly than most of their seeing contemporaries. Isaiah had prophesied that Messiah would open the eyes of the blind (Isa. 29:18; 35:5-6). Frequently in the Synoptics, the desperately needy individuals cried out to Jesus, calling Him the Son of David.[868]¹ There seems to be a relationship between the depth of a person’s felt need and his or her willingness to believe in Jesus.” (Constable; Emphasis mine.) Faith is in the process. Without it nothing happens.

Works Cited

Scripture quotations [unless otherwise noted] are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Click here to access the works cited web-page for this document, save those marked as “Notes” or “Other Works Cited”–if any. Most of these cited works correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of general background information and references, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with. ¶ Furthermore, there may be numbered notes that are URL linked; these are usually retained numbered notes from Thomas Constable’s, “Dr. Constable’s Expository (Bible Study) Notes.” These links are preserved “as is” at the time of this work’s formation and I usually include other citation information from Constable as well (e.g. authors’ names).

Other Works Cited

Note: All of the resources below were cited in at least one of the sermons in the Book of Matthew but not necessarily this one.

Augsburger, David. Dissident Discipleship. Brazos Press, 2006.

Barclay, William. Barclay’s Daily Study Bible. Westminster Press, 1955-1960. Sourced digitally from studylight.org/commentaries/eng/dsb.html.

Blomberg, Craig L. Matthew. New American Commentary, vol. 22, ed. David S. Dockery, et al., Broadman Press, 1992. May be sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/matthew0000blom

________. Preaching the Parables: From Responsible Interpretation to Powerful Proclamation. Baker Academic, 2004. Sourced from archive.org.
(https://archive.org/details/preachingparable0000blom/page/82/mode/1up)

Bruce, Alexander Balmain. The Training of the Twelve. Ed., A.C. Armstrong and Son, reprint 1984, Kregel Publications, 1971 edition.

Carson, D. A. “Matthew.” The Expositors Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein, Ed. et al., Zondervan, 1984.

_______. The Sermon on the Mount : an Evangelical of Matthew 5-7 Exposition. 1978, Baker Book House, fifth printing, 1989. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/sermononmounteva0000cars/page/54/mode/1up

_______. When Jesus confronts the world : an exposition of Matthew 8-10. Originally published by Inter-Varsity Press in 1988, Paternoster, 1995. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/whenjesusconfron0000cars/page/n3/mode/1up

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest. Our Daily Bread Publishing, web ver.

Davies, W. D. and Dale C. Allison, Jr. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. T. & T. Clark, 1988. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/criticalexegetic0001davi/page/n7/mode/1up

Evans, Craig A. The Bible Knowledge Background Commentary: Matthew-Luke. Victor, 2003. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/bibleknowledgeba00crai/mode/1up

France, R. T. The Gospel According to Matthew. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1985.

_______. The Gospel of Matthew. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/gospelofmatthew0000fran/page/n6/mode/1up

Harrington, Daniel J . The Gospel of Matthew. Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 1, A Michael Glazier Book, Liturgical Press (publ.), 1991. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/gospelofmatthew0000harr/mode/1up

Hendriksen, William. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke. Baker Book House, 1984.

Phillips, John. Exploring the Gospels: John. Loizeaux Brothers, 1988.

Plumptre, E. H. “Matthew.” Commentary for English Readers, Charles John Ellicott, Compiler/Editor, Lord Bishop of Gloucester Cassell and Company, Limited, 1905. Sourced from BiblePortal.com. Click here for a list of the authors of the CER.

Robinson, Monte. The Way of Discipleship. Independently published, 2021. Web, aimdiscipleship.org/book.html, accessed Oct 2023.

Wiersbe, Warren. The Wiersbe Bible Commentary. 2 Volumes, David C. Cook, 2007.

Yancey, Philip. The Jesus I Never Knew. Zondervan, 1995.

4.1